


sometimes the blues is just a passing bird

by caesarions



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Developing Relationship, Emotional Constipation, Father-Son Relationship, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Blue Lions Route, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Minor Character Death, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-09
Updated: 2019-08-09
Packaged: 2020-08-13 20:00:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20179897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/caesarions/pseuds/caesarions
Summary: Grief, great and small, is whatever its owner makes of it. Grief can be as sharp as a dagger or as soft as a fur cloak. Grief can be as slow to take root as creeping ivy or as speedy to hit as dragonfire.Dimitri and Felix compare notes.





	sometimes the blues is just a passing bird

They carried Rodrigue—no, his corpse, a lifeless and useless plaything—from Grondor to Fhirdiad, on Dimitri’s own orders. In a ceremony smaller than it should have been, as the western would-be noble attendants were still being brought to heel, they laid the Shield of Faerghus to rest next to his late king and eldest son. The family sepulchres in Fradalrius would have served just as well, but a force, however small, could not be spared right now.

And Felix would not go. 

Felix’s restless energy did not lend itself to facing the people that he had failed the most. It was just enough to send him careening from his assigned quarters, where the very insignias of _ pity _ threatened to trap him. 

As they prepared to return to Garreg Mach for the last few days, Mercedes’ tea and Sylvain’s cookies sat steaming on the side table before Felix even awoke. When they remained untouched come afternoon, fresh treats appeared in their stead, and Felix watched impassively as they cooled once more. A pile of books that Ingrid and Ashe collaborated on selecting for him grew at the foot of his bed, their covers gathering dust. When he ran about the royal palace like a man possessed to check on his usual monastery chores, Annette had finished them all, known to him by the braids in the horses’ manes. 

It was all Felix could do not to scream.

He religiously repeated the process every day, hoping beyond hopes Annette would neglect to replenish the hay. 

She never did.

After kicking a stable, Felix stomped to the training grounds to do the thing he knew best. The only thing, really. New faces from the gathered Kingdom forces already knew to allot a wide arc as he wailed on the dummies, aiming for their hay hearts.

Except today, Felix was alone.

That fact should have pleased him. The skies of Faerghus were almost always blanketed in a gray like dirtied wool, so Felix had stopped looking up ages ago. Thus, the first drop bulleted into a gelid crown on his head. When he stopped in the middle of the field, the vengeful northern spring broke her own back and began to sob. 

Felix held out his palm to test the temperature, and the rain sent shock-waves hurdling up his spine. 

Heading for the line of false foes regardless, an invisible force in the shadows slowed Felix’s steps. Surely not. Whipping around, he found only Byleth eyeing him while holding the nearest castle door open. 

Byleth shook their head in silence. 

After kicking up the dusty ground that was quickly congealing, Felix stalked inside before it could downpour, if only to keep his blade from rusting. He said nothing to the professor, desiring neither explanation nor sympathy in a towel. 

Instead, Felix climbed the first grand oaken staircase he came across, feet tugging at the royal blue carpet unceremoniously. This route, too, was a familiar haunt. To make up for the hours he would have spent training, Felix simply repeated his ascent a few times. By the time his body permitted Felix to stay on this upper floor for good, his clothes had inadvertently dried.

With all of the preparations filling the palace like discordant song, the servants did not even have the time to light the sconces past a certain level. Not to mention, Cornelia’s nefarious neglect had let the cobwebs gather. She was nothing but a corpse like his father’s, and by the beast’s own hands. 

Felix could be well and truly _ alone_. 

He dragged his fingers across the cracking black stone as he crept to the balcony that he had claimed, for no reason in particular. Not a single one. His footsteps echoed in the empty hall, as if someone else could be walking on the ceiling above him. Nonsense. 

Peeking around the corner and into the daylight—if it could be called that—Felix saw it still rained, the sorry liquid dripping from the stone balustrade and running uneven rivers across the floor. If anything, harder still. 

Felix stepped forward. It seemed only appropriate.

Gripping the railing until his knuckles blanched, he realized that the gathering mist began to obscure his view of the field below. Felix jerked his head about before sliding to the very corner of the balcony. He almost slipped in the process, but finally, the tombstones reared their ugly heads and jutted weathered gray in a puddle of white.

It was not the rain that jolted Felix as he spotted the new bouquet on Rodrigue’s grave. 

As he stood with lips slightly parted, dampness dug its ghostly fingers into his coat. And continued to do so for an immeasurable amount of time, even as another sound grew louder than the insistent pitter-patter of the somber weather.

Footsteps. Only one man walked as heavily as that, even without the midnight black armor, which he was never seen without. 

The footsteps stopped. And then, the rain. 

Felix snatched Dimitri’s wrist in a vice grip as soon as the blond’s arm finished its ascent. Glaring up, though the black fur at Dimitri’s neck blocked his vision of the now-king, Felix snapped, “Just what do you think you’re doing?” 

“Simply shielding you from the storm, I presumed,” the other man shrugged, as evident by the ripple in the blue fabric around Felix. Instead of anything accusatory, Dimitri said, “So that you do not catch a chill.” 

“Ridiculous,” Felix could not help but sneer, but he did not wrench Dimitri’s arm away. “It’s your cloak.”

“Perhaps it is, but it is unnecessary now. I have already gotten wet today.”

Felix directed amber eyes back to his father’s flowers.

He slowly loosened his grip before letting his arm drop dead by his side.

“You knew that I come here,” Felix muttered, half-expecting it to get lost in the cloak. Looking up, the soggy white trim hung defeated over the edge just in front of him.

“I visited the very first night, and I felt eyes on me that were not the dead’s. The darkness mattered little, because only one person came to mind.” Dimitri stared ahead, his face impassive. “You can see the graves, but no one can see you.”

Pointedly ignoring the latter part, Felix spat, “Well, I’m glad someone remembers that I’m very much alive.”

The cloak came closer to his head as Dimitri’s arm faltered. When Felix spared him a glance out of the corner of his eye, he found Dimitri blinking slow, as if the idea had never occurred to him. Felix colored himself surprised Dimitri’s good eye could even see past his plastered bangs. 

“Your father never mistook you for Glenn.”

A disjointed and hollow laugh escaped Felix before he could abort it. “Isn’t that the whole problem?”

“Your father loved you very much. _ You_.” Dimitri sighed and averted his gaze to the ground. “I apologize, again. I was too complacent with my own death, so the chance for Rodrigue to solve this himself has been taken from you in my stead.”

“Apologies are for the feeble, especially when they aren’t necessary. It was his decision.” Not the worst decision in the history of Fódlan, he would grant his father that much. It would be significantly harder to retake the Holy Kingdom without the last of Lambert’s line.

That is, if his father thought like that. That must have been the very last thing on Rodrigue’s mind. 

“I’m not missing out on a single thing. He would’ve been too weak to ever try. Instead, he sicced you on me.”

“He asked nothing of the sort, but the courage to help a friend comes from Rodrigue himself,” Dimitri insisted. After his bangs began to drip, Dimitri pushed them out of the way of his eye with a grimace. “He finally convinced me to dedicate my time to the living, not the dead. Is that not what you wanted for me as well?”

In a simpler time, it had been much easier to say. He ignored that part as well.

“Then, he was a senile old fool that never took his own advice. Sorry you fell for it,” Felix said, tone as acerbic as hot ash, but the words faded just as fast. Even beyond Glenn, which would have been understandable, as parents were not ordained to outlive their children. Understandable, if he had not a second son, ignored in favor of the nebulous concept of chivalry. Even after the last king’s death, nothing could be put into words that would explain their relationship far beyond lord and liege, like Loog and Kyphon.

“I fell for nothing but the truth, and it was also true that the needs of my people outweigh my desire for revenge,” Dimitri continued, coming to look Felix in the face again. His own contorted in regret. “If only he were still around to witness the fruits of his efforts. I hope… It is my hope that Rodrigue can see them, somehow.”

With his free arm, he lowered his hand onto Felix’s shoulder. A touch barely there, though surely more solid than a ghost’s. 

“...He was a fool,” Felix repeated, bringing his own hand up to feel Dimitri’s, “but he was my old man.”

Dimitri nodded. “I know.” 

All stood still. 

Then, barely above a whisper in the remaining drizzle, the king added, “Then why not allow yourself that moment?”

“Of weakness, you mean? Because I do not _ wallow_,” Felix replied too quickly, too cuttingly. Even the gray clouds avoided his vicinity, and Felix squeezed Dimitri’s hand harder.

“Well, that is why I said at the very least a _ moment_. The world will certainly not berate you for taking a night to process it. We all have, at some point.” Felix flushed with the knowledge that Dimitri was correct—Sylvain’s brother, Ashe’s father, Felix remembered them all. He even continued to indulge Mercedes in her little fantasy of treating him like a brother. Dimitri finished with a sigh, “Sometimes, a night is all it takes. I fear I am a terrible example. I somehow neglected to process my grief at all by clinging to a shadow of my actual motives for nine long years.”

Felix laughed, though he knew not the reason why, and the taste was bitter on his tongue. Five of those years, he had missed. “And we can see where that got you.”

Glancing up, he found that the clouds were not avoiding his wrath, but only spread themselves thinner as the irritated spring weather dissipated. Sewn patches of a bright blue began to peek through to stare down, where the frigid rain had settled into a heavier fog, blanketing the graves from sight in pure white shrouds. 

“And I would never, ever want that life for you, Felix,” Dimitri said, watery, but plain with honesty. He patted the other man’s shoulder, making his touch more concrete before attempting to slip out of the chokehold Felix’s hand had on his. “I apologize if I intruded. I simply wanted to make sure it wasn’t too late.” 

_ Too late _, rattled morosely in Felix's brain. 

Watered down, the cloak was much heavier. Dimitri’s arms collapsed about his shoulders at the same time Felix’s legs did. It was all he could do to hoist himself back up by desperately clasping Dimitri’s hand again. 

He caught only a glimpse of Dimitri’s open mouth and wide eyes, not so different from the blue of the calming sky, before Felix’s vision blurred. His tear tracks would have remained invisible, had he been allowed to stand in the storm. Of course, Dimitri had to act the noble fool and forgo his cloak until the rain had stopped. 

That same matted cloak now found its way around both of them. As soon as Felix let out a wavering gasp, Dimitri said not another word, but pressed the other against his solid chest. It was half-embrace, half-battle stance. 

His jet black plate was not as cold as expected.

Felix sobbed.

He sobbed until the sun had climbed much higher in the Fhirdiad sky, and Dimitri’s chest was just as soaked as his hair and cloak. Felix closed his eyes against the onslaught of torch-hot shame. He rested his forehead on the spot over Dimitri’s heart before his voice climbed its way back through the ages to him and settled into his throat burned raw and doused out. Dimitri himself continued to say nothing, but he did not have to.

“...I’ve only cried like this once before.”

“When was that, if I may ask?” Dimitri mused, a frown evident in his voice. His arms pulled Felix closer, if that was even yet possible. “I will admit to being a little upset that I can’t remember, despite all of our years together.”

Felix looked up at him. Though he had been in Fraldarius lands, he conjured the image that his mind had dogged him with, a guillotine glinting in white lightning. 

“When my father said that you had died.”

That night, Felix settled into bed with a courtly romance and a cup of tea.

**Author's Note:**

> i hope you enjoyed!!! felix and dimitri really grab me as a pair because they're emotionally stunted in their own special ways, lmfao. i need them to work through it and Kiss. i want to write for them again, and i like a lot of other pairings in-game like felix/sylvain too, so you haven't seen the last of me.
> 
> comments & kudos always appreciated!


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